Welcome to UCLA, Sucker!

Thursday, October 22, 1998

Welcome to UCLA, Sucker!

HISTORICAL: From shaving freshmen’s hair to stripping dress code
violators of clothing, officially sanctioned

hazing was common in the good old days at UCLA

By Pauline Vu

Daily Bruin Contributor

In UCLA’s first year of existence, the freshman class gathered
at the athletic field to choose a student government.

All was going according to plan until, shortly before they began
voting, a mob of sophomores appeared on the scene ­ with a
fire hose.

"Before it was over," a local newspaper reported, "there were
bruised shins and torn clothing, skinned elbows and lost
tempers.

"Thoroughly drenched, however, both classes cooled off, and the
atmosphere was cleared. Student life at the University had
officially begun."

And with that beginning came hazing, the official form of
entertainment for the Southern Branch of the University of
California, as UCLA was then known at its Vermont Avenue campus
near downtown Los Angeles.

Hazing had humble beginnings, starting that year with the
posting of 17 Freshman Commandments.

The commandments were traditions borrowed from Berkeley, the
sister school of the Southern Branch, and were largely aimed at the
male population.

There were many potential violations for freshmen. "Queening,"
the courting of a female student, was absolutely forbidden.
Freshman males seen even walking with a female could be accused of
queening and punished accordingly.

Loitering about Sophomore Grove, a grassy area of eucalyptus
trees reserved strictly for sophomores and their elders, could
result in a dunking in the fish pond in front of Millspaugh
Hall.

And violating the dress code was a common danger.

Freshmen could not wear varsity jackets or pins reminiscent of
high school days. Nor could they wear jeans (reserved for
sophomores), corduroys (juniors), or the Stetson-like hat that only
seniors graced.

Known as peagreeners, freshmen were forced to wear green
beanie-like hats called "dinks" so that the rest of the school
could easily identify them.

One advertisement of the Student’s Co-Operative Store
proclaimed, "Don’t take a chance on being tossed into the Fish Pond
­ buy Frosh Hats!"

It was important that freshmen especially hold true the first
commandment: "Thou shall keep thy place behind thy scholastic
predecessors at all times."

If they didn’t, however, the commandment’s attachment read,
"Remember that though the color of thy class be Green, it may be
changed to Black and Blue by thy superior schoolmates."

The offenders, knowingly or unknowingly, were punished in a
variety of ways, mainly by the Sophomore Vigilantes, an
organization which meted out punishment to the male freshmen.

Those who violated the dress code were immediately stripped of
the offending items of clothing by the Vigilantes and forced to
wear a barrel. Some were driven out to a deserted road and left to
walk home.

Sometimes, the Vigilantes would do both.

Other common punishments included sending freshmen who were
caught queening to the stocks, giving them "egg shampoo" and
"garlic cure" makeovers and dressing the freshmen in females’
garb.

During hazing’s tenure, however, the sophomore class came up
with a variety of creative punishments.

Women actively got involved with hazing male freshman in 1926
­ with bows and arrows.

"Imagine being placed in front of a target with an apple on your
head, while several girls that you had a right to suspect were only
fair archers aimed in your general direction," recounted one
newspaper.

Luckily, there were no casualties.

That same year the Vigilantes found an old Ford which,
unfortunately, did not run. This proved be no problem, however, as
freshmen were forced into serving as the engine.

Another group of sophomores, not to be outdone, found an
old-fashioned surrey and had freshmen pull them along. The
sophomores rode up and down Vermont Avenue at breakneck speeds,
often up to two miles per hour.

Although freshman women were spared the great indignities of the
men, they also had to undergo freshmen hazing, albeit of a more
civilized form.

Like the men, the women could not queen or wear flashy colors,
and were punished by sophomores who swathed salvage bags carelessly
about them, messed their hair up and publicly marched the culprits
about.

And though the women did not have to wear dinks, they had to
flaunt large green buttons that proclaimed "froshie" on it.

By 1925, hazing activities were confined by the school
administration to only the first three days of school. After that,
freshmen could, in theory, go to school unmolested.

Despite this, not all freshmen were pacified.

"Why, it’s an outrage!" proclaimed one freshman in the school
newspaper, then called the California Grizzly, "I don’t like it at
all."

"In some respects it is rather good," said another freshman, "It
takes us down a peg or two from the height we have been living in
the last year."

"But then," he added, "it doesn’t reflect much glory on the
education of the sophomores."

The freshman class had one chance of redemption for the
indignities they suffered. The annual Frosh-Soph Brawl was a
competition between the classes, with games like the tug-of-war,
the tie-up, the flag pole, the ball roll and the joust.

The Frosh-Soph Brawl took place in a field of mud. In the
tie-up, the objective was for the two teams to come running at each
other, armed only with rope, then to tackle and tie up a member of
the opposition, and drag him off the field.

In the ball roll, a giant ball six feet in diameter was placed
in the middle of the field and 10 men on each team would attempt to
push the ball to the other team’s side. Sometimes a man would fall
and the ball would roll over him, but there was never any harm
done.

The last year of officially-sanctioned hazing, the 1926-27
school year, saw hazing at its peak.

Besides the common male freshman hazing, the sophomore women set
up a Court of Justice, complete with a judge, prosecuting and
defense attorneys and a jury, to punish the offending freshmen
women.

"Freshman women who have boasted that they are not being watched
will not boast so much starting today," said "Judge" Ruth
McFarland.

"Now that (the girls) are acquainted with the campus, we will
begin to tighten up on them and insist that they obey the
traditions which previous freshmen classes have followed," she
added ominously.

In the eyes of the school administration, however, hazing had
gone too far.

One activity the Vigilantes practiced that the school especially
frowned upon was the act of jumping a freshman, holding him down,
and shaving a row in the middle of his hair.

After 1926-27 school year, hazing was officially banned. Slowly,
the old traditions and rules, such as the dress codes and no
queening rule, grew less popular. By the time the Southern Branch
moved to the Westwood campus, they were nearly forgotten.

The Frosh-Soph Brawl was still allowed to continue, though, and
existed in various forms until 1965.

Today, there are no remnants of these forms of freshman hazing.
Freshmen who think they have it tough because an upperclassman
tells them that Bunche Hall is in the Court of Sciences will never
know the pleasures of being dunked in the Inverted Fountain or
having their clothes ripped off them.

But once, long ago at this university, there was a proud
tradition known as freshman hazing.

University Archives

Sophomores surround and mock a freshman ( second from right) who
is forced to wear the freshman hat called a "dink." The hat made
freshmen easier to identify.

University Archives

Sophomore students gather at Sophomore Grove on the old Vermont
campus. Any freshman who dared sit there was treated to a free bath
in the Ash pond.

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